Is the peaceable man to reduce or stop violent aggression against his fellow men but to continue it against other fellow creatures? What about the animals? We are not entitled to destroy animal life without an adequately necessary and morally justifiable purpose. Therefore it is well to enquire from the wise and good into the character of such purposes, and be guided by their counsel rather than by environmental custom. For the latter has led us, through its utter ignorance and total unawareness of the higher laws, into a situation where blow after blow falls heavily upon the human race. Why should we be so astonished that peace is so hard to obtain, that all too often flaming violence of war and death and mutilation is carried across the land despite our prayers to God and our plans to the contrary? So long as millions of innocent animals are bred only to be sent to the slaughterhouses for our unnecessary food, so long will Life pay us in like coin. The lower characteristics are taken into the body, the blood, the nerves, and the brain. They become a part of us. The mind's response to higher ideals is dulled. The passions which make for strife and thence for war meet with less opposition from conscience and reason. The fear, suspicion, fright, and desire for self-protection which contribute toward war, being impregnated into the blood of our meat during the moments preceding its slaughter, are little by little brought into us too through the glands, the nervous system, and the brain, as our own blood feeds them in turn. It would be desirable, although admittedly difficult, gradually to adopt a meatless diet as a help to secure both the individual's development and the world's peace.
-- Notebooks Category 5: The Body > Chapter 3 : Diet > # 160
